Where Joe writes articles about Housing, Real Estate & Business

Finding great deals in real estate is a crucial if you wish to succeed in the business. Many new real estate investors wait for deals to fall from the sky, but that is not the case. You have to work in order beat your competition when it comes to buying and selling property.

The problem that many real estate investors face, is not knowing where they can find good deals,and if they have managed to get some deals, then they have not tapped the full potential of other options. As an investor you have to know where to look. The following are the top 5 ways real estate investors are finding deals in 2016.

1. Foreclosed Property

Failing to pay mortgage for an extended time period will ultimately lead the lender to repossess the property and evacuate the tenants.Once the house is empty, the lender will list the house for sale.

Even though no one rejoices when people lose their house,these properties are among the best deals you can find in real state. By talking to local real estate agents, you can find about foreclosures in that area and start checking them out one by one.

2. Approach Property Owners Directly

Finding a great deal can be very hard as more and more people are looking to settle in homes. You won’t be surprised when you find a house on sale gets many offers in the first several days. Using the listing service will put in line among other interested buyers waiting for a deal that you might not get.

Real estate investors nowadays look outside the listing service by contacting the owners directly and convincing them to consider selling. A considerable number of home owners, especially those who own a home but do not live there will entertain that option. You can drive around the neighborhoods looking for homes that look vacant, buying public records list, or calling landlords and letting them know you are interested.

3. Always Be the First or the Last to Make An Offer

Sometimes when property owners decide to sell the house, they accept the first deal that comes through the door. By making sure that you are first to offer a deal, gives you an advantage over your competitors. You can make sure you are the first by having your real estate agent set up automatic email alerts of new properties in the market. Once the email hits your inbox,check out the property quickly and if possible, make an offer on that very same day.

Another way of getting a great deal is by looking for properties that have been in the market for a long time. The owners are usually willing to sell because they are tired of holding house for a long time. If presented with a good deal at a discount, they will sell.

4. Auction Properties

Auctions might not be well known as foreclosures but they will indeed help you in finding a good deals. Properties are placed for action if the owner neglects to play property taxes or the property has gone into foreclosure. These auctioned houses can receive a starting bid of equal to or less than remaining balance on the mortgage.

Before attending the auction, check the property out and conduct a thorough research of the property as it will aid you in knowing how much you should spend on the property. During the auction you should act quickly if you intend to purchase the property.

5. Implement Your Own Ways of Finding Deals

There are many ways in which you can get a great deal. By using the above ways, you will have acquired some experience and formed business relationships with many people. The more you make great deals with property owners, the more they will recommend you to their friends hence more deals. Think of what would make you, as property owner, consider in selling your house.

6. Buying Seller Leads From Online Sources

Many investors around the county would rather skip the mundane and tedious work that goes into putting together a direct mail campaign or building a lead generation website with an Adwords campaign to drive traffic. And most investors definitely are not going to learn the ins and outs of SEO, especially because it can take months on end to actually start generating the first lead. This is precisely why many investors opt to find motivated seller leads online, the easy way; by simply purchasing them exclusively from other sites like BiggerPockets, where investors sell real estate leads from motivated homeowners.

7. Other strategies that you can use include:

Use cash when negotiating for a deal. Cash can really speed up the transactions by eliminating a lot hassles. When proposing a deal, the mention of strait up cash will entertain the sellers.

Search online for real estate deals. The internet is a very crucial tool that you should use to find deals. Listing websites like Craigslist will aid you especially if you are the first respond to a post.

At any given point in time you can do a search on google to find out what Realtors think the best methods are to sell a house fast at that very moment in time. But why do all that searching when you can just read further in this article and garner a true real estate investor & broker’s perspective on real life experiences on how houses are sold fast.

Before moving on, I want to be responsible and give a brief disclosure. By no means is the aforementioned information about selling your house supposed to be construed as actual results…these ideas and strategies in this articles were just gleaned from being in the real estate business for several years, both on the retail side and on the investing side of things:

Leave Your Emotions at the Front Door.

I couldn’t sleep at night without explaining how important it is for the seller of anything, much less a house, to leave their emotions at the door when deciding on an exit strategy for anything, whether it’s exiting a stock or exiting an long investment in a home. So, why shouldn’t we allow our emotions to help us navigate this difficult and nerve wrecking process; Besides, shouldn’t we trust our gut instinct in these types of decisions? Well, simply put, no. But I am sure that that wasn’t the answer you were expecting, so let me satisfy your need for understanding. I believe that there are many times in our decision making when we should and “have-to” use our gut and emotions to make a good decision, but most times, we should only rely on our emotions when we DO NOT have concrete historical or otherwise factual information at our fingertips to guide us to a reasonable conclusion (e.g. comparable sales data). Trust the data, not your emotions…throughout the house sale.

Research the Comps Meticulously if you Really Must Sell the House Fast.

As mentioned earlier in this article, we must trust the data (comps) not our emotions. In order to trust the data, we must first understand the comparable sales of the subdivision/ area that your house is located in. This is something you should do no matter what market you’re located in; it isn’t just something that works in the San Antonio, TX market. Typically, it is a good idea to only look at sales that occurred within the last 6 months and in the same subdivision if it is active enough. Of course, looking at similar beds, baths, square footage, ect, is important, looking closely at the photos of the homes that sold in a short amount of time is extremely important. This is because in your investigating the home sales in your subdivision, you will see certain traits about a house that sold with a low days on market that other houses just don’t possess. That’s what you’re looking for. Those few details about a house that make it stand out from the rest is exactly what caused that particular house to sell so quickly versus all the others that either took forever to sell or still haven’t sold. It’s those real design, decor, or landscaping differences and tweaks that you can do to help you sell your house. Here’s what you need to do once you find out exactly what it is that separates those houses from yours:

Make a list of the top ten items that you feel separates your house from those that sold faster than all of the others.

Find inexpensive ways to achieve those same results without the high costs associated with renovating a house.

Implement those in-expensive cost saving techniques into your home.

Price Your House Correctly the first Time.

Many homeowners that I’ve both represented & that I have purchased houses from just don’t understand how extremely vital it is for a seller to price a home correctly from day one. What do I mean by “price the home correctly”? No matter what you “think” your home is worth, or what you would “like” to get for the house, you should use the historical comparable sales and remove all emotion from the equation and find a price that is right at what the most similar comp is from your home. If you can do that and you’ve taken all of my other advice in this article, then I believe that you will have a quick sale and a fast closing of your house.

Of course if you’re like some home owners and not willing to go through the hard work that it takes to prepare a home for sale and would rather just go the easy route and find an all cash home buyer (investor) to buy your house from you quickly and easily, then you could always go that route. We buy houses from home owners that are in that type of situation, cause they really just don’t know which direction to take and they are tired of the headaches. Although dealing with an investor can sometimes lead to lower offers, it can also be a very viable means to an end in that if the house is a problem property for you, then they can make your “problem” disappear very quickly.

Successful businesses have trade secrets that help them in being better than the rest of the other businesses in a certain industry. They are called secrets and are kept only within the company, specifically only few of the people in the company know about it. This is also very true for the real estate industry as a whole, especially in big markets like San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and Dallas TX. How life would be better and easier if businesses would just give our their trade secrets for all of us to be as successful as they are. But unfortunately this is not the case. Most secrets remain with the top management people. You need to go through a lot of needle holes just to acquire such. But we are genuinely concerned enough to give you the magic three in the real estate investment.

Investing in the real estate would mean opening your doors to endless possibilities of earning based on calculated risk including the time you will spend to on each property. You need to be able to make smart choices in buying investments to attain these potential profits. You should strive to get in front of the best opportunities as possible.

PLAYING FAIRLY

In the cash-on-cash return, it is exceedingly recommended that one pays fair. You are already taking out money from your liquid financial assets when buying a property. Assets that include stocks, CDs, bonds and you are investing these to an illiquid asset- real estate. For example, when your actual earning of rate of return of your financial assets is 4 percent of even 6 percent, you must work hard to earn a fair cash on can rate of return on the new investment. You must pro forma your deals and only buy those positive cash flow properties that will give you decent returns to be able to achieve this scheme. Do not waste your precious time on negative cash flow and do not consider such. To be guided accordingly, you do a more in depth study about this subject.

YOU MUST TAKE CALCULATED RISKS

When you invest, you also take the risk. Investments have two sides, either you will succeed or you will fail. No one can tell what your investment’s future will be. No one knows exactly how this investment can grow or how I can get you down but certainly there can be calculations done to be able to get near the possible outcome. So when one can be calculated, you will then know what you need to reach to be able to reach a certain goal. But always take note and never forget that investing in a real estate is an extremely risky business undertaking.

There are those types investments that can lead you to the wrong course; some of those just might not turn out the what you expected it to, and worse, it could turn out to be appallingly wrong. This can certainly happen when buying houses from sellers whom may be hiding certain material facts about a property that you’re looking to buy. You need to consider taking fee for the title under your own in owning real estate property. In addition to that, you must exercise property due diligent, examine, evaluate and study your every moves to make lower risks in decisions you make with your real estate investment.

NO EXTRA TIME

Finding a property that doesn’t take too much of your time will be very beneficial. If you deal with properties that require so much of your time you will have to spend extra in hiring someone to do the tasks for you – an added expenses on your part. Focus on finding property that needs lesser time from you such s vacation rentals, low properties in bad areas or college rentals. Managing a rental rented to a tenant with decent credit profile for a long time is the one that requires least time. Also, by treating your tenants the right way coupled with respect will lead to a good and long relationship with them. It is a very important thing that you keep this type of relationship with your tenants to avoid issues and problems.